Giftedness is often defined as high achievement. Unfortunately this definition excludes gifted students with learning disabilities, underachievers, bored students who are labeled "trouble makers" and gifted students -- often girls -- who disguise their giftedness to gain social approval. In contrast, rather than looking at giftedness in relationship to external achievement, at Rocky Mountain School we view giftedness from within.

Gifted children typically view the world, their environment and their relationships differently than their age peers. With few exceptions, gifted and creative children demonstrate well-developed abstract reasoning skills – the ability to conceptualize at an advanced level. An equally important, although sometimes puzzling, characteristic of giftedness is uneven, or asynchronous, development. It is typical for a student to excel in some academic subjects and need support in others. Intellectual or philosophical understanding sometimes exceeds the physical or emotional ability to respond to it. To complicate this complex profile further, gifted children frequently have a heightened awareness of emotions, consequences of actions and decisions, and their environment.  The intensity with which they engage in most activities of their lives can be overwhelming for themselves as well as those around them.  In short, the child's academic, emotional, ethical, spiritual and physical development is often out of sync.

Because we understand, and even expect, this uneven development, the Rocky Mountain School learning environment is designed to support the uniqueness of the whole child.